I Want To Live
“I want to live.”
That’s what I told my Life Coach the next time we met over Zoom.
“I was lying in bed and couldn’t sleep last night.”
“Tons of thoughts were rolling through my head and keeping me awake.”
“I was shocked when I realized the dominant thought I was thinking was I want to live.”
I told my coach, “I haven’t been having suicidal thoughts, but I haven’t been interested in living a long life either.”
“For as long as I can remember, every day up until last week has been dark, lonely, and full of shame and painful thoughts about my life and my future.”
“Who would want to live a long life if that’s what their days were filled with?”
I wrote a few blogs to explain how powerful Life Coaching can be and how it can help anyone who is drinking too much and wants to cut back, quit, or overcome any other dependency or life issue they may have.
I’ve been writing about how Life Coaching works, how to give up alcohol, and how to overcome the urge to drink.
But this time I want to write about what you gain.
So I asked myself what is the biggest benefit I got from seeing a Life Coach and stopping drinking.
What did I get?
The answer is I got my life back.
I want to live.
Is there a bigger gift you can receive?
Is there a more complete and powerful life change I can describe to you to convince you that you should see a Life Coach?
I don’t think there is, and I never thought seeing a Life Coach would lead to the experience I had and the incredibly wonderful new life I’m living now.
(Photo by dominik hofbauer on Unsplash)
For over thirty years, I had been angry and ashamed.
I hated my life.
I blamed my dad for ruining my life by making me move every four years as I grew up.
And I hated myself for turning to alcohol and drugs to deal with the moves and the hatred.
If you’ve read anything of mine, you know I tried many different things over the years to overcome my problems, but nothing worked.
My life was like a roller coaster ride.
Up and down. Up and down.
I’d find some peace and clean up my act for a little while, but I kept returning to the hate, anger, depression, and of course the alcohol and drugs.
(Photo by blueberry Maki on Unsplash)
I had hit yet another low.
But luckily for me, this time my wife signed me up to meet with a Life Coach six times over the next six weeks for 50 minutes a session.
I didn’t think much would come from it.
But I felt like I had to at least try and see.
It was the middle of the night, about 2:30 am, after my fourth session with my coach when the thought came to me.
I want to live.
I really couldn’t believe I was thinking this way.
Up until that moment, I wasn’t interested in living a long life.
As I said earlier, I wasn’t having suicidal thoughts.
I had them before, but it had been a while.
I just wasn’t interested in living a long life or life at all.
Up until that night, I would have been alright with dying.
I wasn’t looking for it, but if death came, it would have been alright with me.
Who would want to live a long life when every second of every day is filled with the darkness of the thoughts I was constantly drowning in?
But something had happened during my coaching session the afternoon before, and everything changed.
The hatred was gone.
The self-loathing was gone.
The anger was gone.
I wanted to live.
I couldn’t believe it.
My thoughts about everything had changed.
Seeing a Life Coach changed every single aspect of my life for the better.
(Photo by Ian Taylor on Unsplash)
Being coached wasn’t hard.
And it wasn’t full of psychobabble jargon.
It was me being honest with someone about the thoughts I was thinking.
And it was me deciding to choose new thoughts so I could create a new result and a new life.
My Life Coach showed me how I have control over my life by the thoughts I choose to think.
She showed me I was wrong to think that the circumstances I experience determine my feelings, actions, or results.
I had felt like a victim of everything for the longest time, and my coach showed me how I was mistaken.
She did it with love, kindness, compassion, honesty, and great skill.
She didn’t tell me what to think or do.
And she never told me what I was doing or thinking was wrong.
The most impactful thing she did was show me how the thoughts I was choosing were creating my problems.
Then she allowed me to decide if I wanted to change those thoughts or keep them.
Being coached by her was different from all of the other things I had tried in the past.
She showed me how I wasn’t a victim of any past event or circumstance.
She showed me how I have all the control I want and need to create any result I desire.
She showed me how everything was right with me.
She opened the door that allowed me to take back my power, sense of responsibility, and self-respect.
She opened the door, and I jumped through. 
(Photo by Jan Tinneberg on Unsplash)
I can show you how to do the very same thing.
It’s way easier than you may think.
You won’t feel as though you have given up anything you ever wanted to keep.
You’ll only know that you got back the most important thing you’ll ever have…
Your life.